


Slipping Away

by Uozumi



Category: Doctor Who, The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Character Death, Classic Doctor Who References, Dark, Gen, I Blame Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2768759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uozumi/pseuds/Uozumi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the course of six years, Malcolm experiences blackouts with increased frequency and his dreams become strange. Only at his weakest moment does he find there is no escape from a sinister plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slipping Away

**Author's Note:**

> **Title** _Slipping Away_  
>  **Author** Uozumi **Fandom** _Doctor Who_ / _The Thick of It_  
>  **Character(s)/Pairing(s)** Malcolm Tucker, Jamie MacDonald, Sam Cassidy, Twelfth Doctor, Clara Oswald, Missy; take what pairings as you will  
>  **Genre** Dark/Drama/Gen/Science Fiction  
>  **Rating** PG-13 (R for language)  
>  **Word Count** 2,420  
>  **Disclaimer** _Doctor Who_ and _The Thick of It_ c. BBC  
>  **Summary** Over the course of six years, Malcolm experiences blackouts with increased frequency and his dreams become strange. Only at his weakest moment does he find there is no escape from a sinister plot.  
>  **Warning(s)** violence, body horror, major character death, spoilers up through “Death in Heaven” from _Doctor Who_ and spoilers for all episodes and specials of _The Thick of It_  
>  **Notes** Tumblr started talking about this concept of Malcolm as some kind of trap for the Doctor or connected to the Doctor, so my brain just ran with it and came up with how this would all work. This became a bit of a conundrum in places towards the end, so I kind of took a page from Classic Who. Speaking of Classic Who, this fic references a conjecture from the Master from "Trial of a Time Lord."

**_Slipping Away_ **

“Are you with me?” Jamie’s question was so quiet that Malcolm almost did not hear it.

Malcolm looked around and blinked. They were on Westminster Bridge. Malcolm took a deep breath. He did not know how they arrived. 

“I paid for lunch,” Jamie said, still speaking very quietly. His fingertips touched Malcolm’s arm and they started walking in the direction Jamie faced. 

Malcolm took another deep breath. He moved slightly closer to Jamie when his knees threatened to buckle. He licked his lips. “I have to…I have to get to a graveyard. Clara’s in danger.” He paused and shook his head. “No. Clara’s been dead for decades…” his voice trailed. 

Jamie bit his lip. “She’s fine. We’re all fine,” he whispered. 

The longer they walked, the tenser Malcolm’s shoulders became. He looked at his mobile. There were a dozen missed calls. It was an hour after the last time he looked at his mobile, which felt like five minutes ago. His attention shifted to Jamie. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re all eyes,” he said. He checked a reminder from Sam that he had a meeting in twenty minutes. 

“You had another fit. How do you think we got here?” Jamie asked. “At this rate, you’re going to die of twenty-three stab wounds and your transformation into Caesar with be complete.” 

Malcolm shook his head. “I have to go.” He ran off to make his meeting on time. 

The first incident was three years ago. Malcolm was in his office. He could see Sam carrying tea in and Jamie by the window. He blinked and then Jamie had hold of his right arm and Sam his left arm. 

“…hospital,” Sam said as though she had a full sentence before that word Malcolm had not heard. 

“No,” Malcolm murmured. Everything was spinning without moving. He closed his eyes. He did not want the office to know he needed to go to the hospital. 

“Fuck,” Jamie said. His grip tightened and so did Sam’s grip. They helped Malcolm down onto his chair. They sent for an ambulance. The doctors claimed they could not find anything usual about Malcolm asides from known conditions. He was advised to reduce his stress and remember to eat at regular intervals. 

If there were more incidents for the rest of that year, Malcolm was unaware. The next one he could remember happened at Jamie’s house a week after the prime minister resigned. Malcolm brought wine and some awful movies Jamie liked to verbally destroy from his collection. 

“No,” Jamie said the instant he opened the door. “Just fuck off home.”

“We talked about this,” Malcolm said. “If either of us was forced out –”

“Not if you forced me out,” Jamie said. “You have three second or I’m going to rip a hinge off this door and use it to reopen that shit piercing in your ear, and make new ones.” 

“I didn’t force you out,” Malcolm said. “I wasn’t even there when you left.”

Jamie took the wine and DVDs from Malcolm’s hands. He set them on a small table near the door. Then he grasped Malcolm by the shirt and hauled him inside. The door closed at the same moment Malcolm’s back hit the wall. “I can take a lot of shit from you but don’t lie to my face. We were both there. If you’ve come to cock about, I’m going to finish it.” 

Malcolm grabbed Jamie’s wrists. Malcolm’s grip was very tight. He held Jamie’s gaze. Jamie’s nostrils were flared and his jaw tight. Jamie’s brow furrowed and his grip tightened on Malcolm’s shirt. Malcolm let go. His heart rate increased. His mind raced through the last few weeks. There were holes here and there throughout the chaos since the resignation. 

When Malcolm let go, Jamie let go. “Shit. Shit,” Jamie said. “Are you with me?”

“Of course I’m with you,” Malcolm said. He felt his heart continue to race. He rubbed his chest and took a deep breath. He held it and let it out slowly. 

“You keep checking out,” Jamie said. “I thought you were doing it again.”

Malcolm inhaled slowly again, held his breath, and exhaled. His heart rate began to feel more normal. He closed his eyes. “I’m fine,” he managed. “I should go home.” He reached out for the DVDs but for a brief moment, he thought he saw a mummy instead. Malcolm’s eyes widened and Jamie’s entryway looked normal again. 

Jamie sighed. “You’re staying,” he said. “I can’t let you fuck off like this.” Jamie guided Malcolm towards the sitting room. “You’re still a cunt.” 

Malcolm could hear Jamie talking and he processed the words but it felt like a part of his brain could not understand them. Jamie guided him to a chair and roughly sat him in it. They did not speak for the rest of the night. 

Malcolm woke in the morning with a yelp. He heard Jamie drop a pan in the kitchen. Malcolm looked down at his hands and around the room. The dream he had was so vivid. He was alien in a human guise running around with children and young adults in a very strange forest. It was not the first time he had such a dream. Malcolm touched his chest, finding only one heart beating rapidly inside. He did not know why he thought he might have two. 

“What’s going on?” Jamie asked. 

“Fucked up nightmare,” Malcolm said. He got up and folded the blanket Jamie must have cast over him before he went to be hours ago. “Don’t worry about it,” Malcolm murmured. 

“I’m not,” Jamie said before Malcolm disappeared to the toilet. 

A year later, Jamie’s tone was very different. “I’m worried,” he said to Malcolm when they stood in Jamie’s garden. “Sam’s worried. Even you’re worried.” He lit another fag. 

“Nobody can find a cause,” Malcolm said. More than one doctor suggested that it was psychosomatic and Malcolm would benefit from therapy, but Malcolm did not want to talk about his stress to a stranger. The blackouts were infrequent, but the strange dreams were more regular. 

Jamie exhaled a smoke ring that floated away into the air. After a long silence, he asked, “Who’s Clara?”

Malcolm tensed. He put his hands in his pockets and then removed them. 

“You talk about her when your eyes glaze over,” Jamie said. 

“She’s dead,” Malcolm said, “has been for decades.” He did not offer further explanation. 

As the years went along, Malcolm began to lose daylong chunks of memory. He would go to sleep on Sunday night and feel like he woke up on a Wednesday afternoon with Nicola staring at him strangely. The last thing he remembered today was sitting down to lunch with Jamie, vaguely explaining Star Wars to Ollie, and now he sat across from Nicola with that same expression she wore whenever he felt like he woke up with no sense of time. 

“Are you all right?” Nicola asked. 

Malcolm cleared his throat. “Never better.” He glanced at the calendar on his desk. It was a Thursday. He met Jamie for lunch on a Monday. Again, Malcolm found that he had marked off the days that passed since. His gaze returned to Nicola. “You were saying?” he asked. Nicola resumed talking. 

When Nicola left his office, Sam entered with tea. She set it on his desk and then let out a breath she was holding.

“Sam,” Malcolm said. He took the cup and breathed deeply. He met her gaze. He ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth. “Never mind.” 

Sam looked at him. “I sent you an e-mail,” she said. “You should check it.” 

Malcolm eyed her and then nodded. When she left, he looked and found a series of e-mails from Sam recounting the events of the day as though she was forwarding him her records from the end of the day upon his request. He licked his lips and looked at the door to his office. He wondered how obvious his problems were now. He read the files she sent him and tried to reconstruct memories of the time he forgot. 

The inquiry came and went. Malcolm was lucid throughout. He could not remember if he had or had not leaked the file. By the end of the inquiry, he decided he must have leaked it and accepted his punishment quietly. 

When Malcolm went to turn himself in, he found himself alone. The person who came with him was gone and there was no one in the police station to turn himself in to at all. Malcolm walked through the halls. He heard and saw no signs of prisoners either. A whooshing noise echoed through the empty building. Malcolm stopped and watched a police box materialize at an intersection of hallways. His heart rate rose and he spread his arms and stood straighter, uncertain of what might happen next. 

A man emerged from the TARDIS followed by a young woman. Both of them stared at Malcolm and he stared back. Malcolm knew that the man was an alien called the Doctor and the woman was Clara. Malcolm’s dreams were about them. 

The Doctor advanced slowly. His hair was white and wild. He wore a jacket with red lining like a magician. He stopped in front of Malcolm. Their eyes were the same and so were their noses. Their fingers were long and their palms narrow. Their skin was the same pale colour. Malcolm might have thought that this man was him from the future, but he knew better.

Clara slowly approached. She stood beside the Doctor. “Do I know you?” she asked. 

Malcolm opened his mouth and closed it. His parents died when he was too little to remember. A family who already had a daughter named Clara adopted him. One night, when he was at a school trip, their house burned down and killed everyone inside. The Tuckers down the road took him in and raised him as their own. He had never seen that Clara so old or so modern. He did not think that this woman was the Clara he knew, but they looked and acted exactly alike. “I’ve been in the news,” he said quietly. 

“But he does know you very well,” a voice said from down the hall. “Well, a version of you.” 

A woman approached dressed for the Edwardian era. Malcolm recognized her as Missy from one of his dreams about dead people coming back as cyborgs. Malcolm’s jaw tightened, the Doctor’s shoulders slumped, and Clara stepped forward, getting between Missy and the Doctor. 

“You should be dead,” Clara said. 

“Everyone here should be dead,” Missy said with a snort, “or shouldn’t exist,” her eyes moved to Malcolm then. She remained where she was, but kept watching Malcolm. “Haven’t you always wondered why you had no records before the Oswald family? Haven’t you always wondered why you see the first sister you ever knew out of the corner of your eye when there’s trouble in London?” She leaned on her umbrella. 

Malcolm eyed Missy. He did not respond. He knew she was baiting him, but he was not sure for what. 

“Sister?” Clara asked at the same time the Doctor asked Missy, “What have you done?” 

There was silence. Malcolm offered no answers. He watched all of them. The TARDIS and Missy blocked his exits. 

“I’ve thought,” Missy said. She stopped leaning on her umbrella. “Lots of thoughts after you almost killed me.” She glanced at Clara then. Clara kept her eyes on Missy as Missy circled the small group. “When I saw you, I realized the Time Lords gave you more lives.” She spoke casually and did not look at them, but at the pattern on the tile. “So, my theory about your future was incorrect.” She stopped near Malcolm and then looked at the Doctor. “So, I realized what I had to do.” 

The Doctor eyes narrowed. “It’s a myth,” he said. 

“And yet, here he stands,” Missy said. 

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not flipping here,” Malcolm said. He wrinkled his nose when a force accompanying the Doctor edited his statement. 

“You won’t be here much longer,” Missy said. “It’s already begun. After years of spotty memory, you’ve been lucid for almost a week straight.” 

Malcolm’s jaw tensed. He did not respond. It was the truth. 

“You can’t do this,” the Doctor said. 

“You can’t stop it,” Missy said. She watched the Doctor. “You need this as much as I want this.” 

Malcolm’s knees buckled. He took a deep breath and felt Clara take his arm and help him sit on the floor. 

“All of your darkness, all of your violence,” Missy said, “he absorbed all of it.” She looked at the Doctor who was staring at Malcolm with wide eyes. “Don’t look so frightened,” Missy said. “You didn’t want to turn into this, did you?”

“C – Clara,” the Doctor said, “get away from him.” 

Clara looked at the Doctor. She had her hand on his shoulder. Malcolm was beginning to shiver all over. “But –”

“Now,” the Doctor said. 

Clara reluctantly got up and went to the Doctor’s side. “What’s happening?”

“There’s an ancient magic from one of the planets near Gallifrey. When someone lets go of their emotions, the emotions collect into a jar. The jars become sentient,” the Doctor explained. 

“All you need is clay from the planet,” Missy added. “Clay, emotion, and time.” 

Malcolm’s heart could not stop racing. He could barely understand the voices around him. His heart felt like it was splitting in two, but he could not scream. His body continued to shake. 

Clara moved closer to the Doctor. “We’ve got to make it stop.”

“We can’t make it stop,” the Doctor said. He took a deep breath and his gaze shifted to Clara. “Once the transformation begins, it can’t stop. The reason they use jars is the small size. The jar will gain organs and body systems. There has never been something so large used before like this. He might rip apart whether we stop it or not.” 

Light began to gather around Malcolm’s body. It began to glow so brightly that Clara had to close her eyes. Malcolm looked through eyes that were not wholly his own any longer at the people gathered around him. The last thing he saw was Missy’s grin staring back at him. Then Malcolm ceased to exist and the Valeyard took form into the world.

**The End**


End file.
